Modern state of the art radio frequency (RF) power integrated circuit (IC) devices such as, for example, LDMOS (laterally diffused metal oxide semiconductor) IC devices are required to achieve increasingly accurate and consistent performance, whilst at the same time there being a drive to reduce costs.
In order to achieve the increased performance, there is a continual need for improvement within RF power devices in relation to issues such as inconsistent RF grounding, parasitic inductance of die-to-lead interconnects, input drive and output match non-uniformity, power supply lead inductance (which can generate non-linearity or electrical ‘memory effects’), and poor isolation between devices allocated next to each other within a single IC package. Also, growing demand for higher power efficiency and instant operational bandwidth of the RF devices requires a good control of impedances at the fundamental signal frequency f0 and higher harmonics (2f0, 3f0, nf0) of the fundamental signal.